No Place Like Home
by Lirillith
Summary: Kotetsu and Barnaby decide to move in together, but meshing two lives is never easy.


They started talking about it months before they did anything. They wanted to spend more time together; they were each only in their own apartments half the time; they kept doubles of everything in each other's places anyway. Kotetsu's cheap disposable razors in Barnaby's medicine cabinet, an electric toothbrush on the narrow edge of Kotetsu's sink and expensive shampoo and conditioner in the shower. It just made sense, they agreed. But Barnaby was not about to move down to the Bronze stage, and Kotetsu had his doubts about Barnaby's huge, sterile-feeling apartment.

"We should find a new place," Barnaby said. "Something we both picked out, so it's not just me fitting into your space, or you into mine."

Which was fine, and actually really thoughtful, Kotetsu felt, except that Barnaby wanted to look at places with rent that made Kotetsu think in terms of Kaede's college tuition. He didn't totally feel comfortable saying that, because he knew Barnaby had money - not just from the solo endorsement deals, probably something left by his parents too, that news clipping used the word "tycoon" - but he'd always wanted to pull his own weight. He didn't really want to get into some discussion that might end with them _not_ splitting the rent evenly.

So he just did what he always did. He hemmed and hawed and found something wrong with every one of the fancy apartments, sometimes really stupid things, until finally Bunny snapped. "What is your _problem?_ That place was perfect!"

"...just more than I'm used to paying for rent..." Kotetsu finally mumbled, slouched in on himself, hat down in his face. He was expecting a fight, but Bunny just stayed quiet for a while.

"You'd only be paying half," he finally said, not as mad as Kotetsu expected him to sound.

"Even that."

"How much do you pay in rent?" Barnaby asked. "I can't believe we've never discussed this."

Kotetsu _could,_ because he'd done this once before, though back then they were discussing the rent on a crappy little Bronze stage apartment, the amount he made in tips and Tomoe made at the library, and whether they could afford premium cable. "I should have made sure we did," he said, gruffly. "Sorry."

So that was the conversation they had that night, pulling up bank accounts on that giant screen in Barnaby's place where the numbers were inches tall and it all looked good and terrifying, and Kotetsu was forced to admit that, okay, he wasn't _that_ broke anymore - a lot of the endorsement deals were the two of them and not just Barnaby - and he finally conceded that maybe, possibly, he could afford to not only send more money Kaede's way but also spend some more on himself. He did not let Barnaby talk to him about investing rather than just letting his paychecks pile up in his checking account - "Later," he insisted, "we've talked enough about money for one night" - but he knew it was just delaying the inevitable.

* * *

Barnaby would have been happy to pay all of the rent. He knew Kotetsu had other demands on his resources - Kaede's daily expenses, her educational fund, and Kotetsu's tendency to splurge on gifts whenever she came to visit - and Barnaby had more than enough. He would have liked to buy property, actually; jointly, both names on the deed. Something permanent. But he worried about how Kotetsu would take it. Maybe after a few years, once their lives and finances had mingled a bit more, he'd be more amenable to the idea.

Instead, Barnaby handled the situation quietly, contriving to pay for the bulk of the furniture despite Kotetsu's frequent assertions that they'd split the costs evenly. He just never asked Kotetsu to pay him back, or managed to have Kotetsu buy end tables while he paid for the dining set. If his partner ever noticed what he was doing, he didn't bring it up.

Furniture was almost harder for them to agree on than the apartment itself had been, but at least this time it wasn't because of sticker shock; Kotetsu just liked to compare the furniture Barnaby liked to "dentist chairs" or "torture devices" or "spaceship plumbing," and Kotetsu's own taste was disappointingly old-fashioned. They used Kotetsu's living room furniture for the first five months in the new apartment because they couldn't agree on anything else, and then after that they continued to use it out of nostalgia. "Think about all the sex we've had on these," Kotetsu said one day when Barnaby tried to get him to go shopping for replacements.

Barnaby thought about it. "You make a convincing argument," he admitted.

"You want to have some more?"

"Not when you wiggle your eyebrows like that, no."

* * *

Barnaby wasn't quite as much of a neat freak as Kotetsu had feared. His apartment had looked pristine when he lived alone because he had nothing to clutter it and no place for clutter to accumulate. He kept his fan mail at the office, shredded junk mail as it arrived, and didn't collect anything. Once Kotetsu moved in his memorabilia and his photos and started convincing Barnaby to frame some photos of his own, things changed.

Bunny did _try_ to resist. For the first year he nagged Kotetsu to condense the memorabilia collection, put at least some of it in storage, but it was impossible to prune things that way. The scrapbooks Tomoe had made couldn't go anywhere, of course. The magazines all called up some part of his career. Even the bad years had some value to them, if just to remember how much better things had gotten, and there wasn't much for the bad years anyway; who wants to interview a former King of Heroes who's fallen to last place, when he won't say anything about the reason for it? The magazine profiles and merchandise and the fan books dried up during his slump, then exploded again once he and Barnaby teamed up, and he wasn't going to get rid of any of _those,_ either.

"But why do you need..."

"No, listen, remember back when we hated each other? And I'm all 'he's a great partner, very talented,' completely bland and fake. And then six months later I'm gushing over you like... never mind, this is kind of embarrassing."

"Wait, I want to see that." Barnaby draped his arms around Kotetsu's neck, leaning against his back to read over his shoulder.

"How the hell did it take us so long? Jeez. I sound so sappy over you, and this was, what, like three years ago? Four?" Kotetsu set the magazine on the floor, reached for Bunny's hands.

"We're keeping that one. But why do you need those others? I recognize that cover, and you hated me back then." He hooked his chin over Kotetsu's shoulder.

"I did not. And you hated me, too!"

"You _annoyed_ me. You still annoy me," he added, nuzzling Kotetsu's neck. "And you didn't answer the question."

"The... oh, right. So I can remember! It's like the pictures. It never hurts to have reminders."

Through a combination of focused sentimentality and passive resistance, Kotetsu managed to keep almost all of his collection in the apartment, and from there it was just a few more steps to lived-in; _he_ brought his fan mail home to answer, he framed pictures of the two of them, of him and Kaede, Barnaby and Kaede, all three of them together, and stuck them on the mantel and the walls and all over the side table that Barnaby had apparently intended to hold the mail and nothing else.

* * *

Kotetsu wasn't quite as much of a slob as Barnaby had feared, even if he was a bit too addicted to _stuff._ A few incidents from early in their partnership had led him to expect collections of empty bottles, stacks of old takeout containers piled atop the trash can because they wouldn't fit inside it, and heaps of magazines and unopened mail. Kotetsu had insisted for the longest time that those were flukes, he hadn't been expecting guests, he kept things cleaner now, but Barnaby was braced for the worst.

And it was true, Kotetsu didn't usually take out the trash until it was full if not overflowing. He didn't usually empty the recycling bin until it was full, even if that meant a few empty wine bottles gathered on the counter first. He only did laundry when he ran out of socks or underwear, whichever came first, and it was entirely up to Barnaby to remember to change the sheets and launder the towels. But he _would_ take out the trash and recycling, he was scrupulous about sorting the laundry properly, and he cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom without being asked. He only left clothes on the floor if they'd been discarded on the way to having sex, which was hard to argue with, really. Sometimes he even made the bed.

Of course, he ate like a college student - a college student who was trying to haze new members of his fraternity with his disgusting habits, Barnaby still could not watch that man eat a hamburger - and he always left the sink peppered with stubble. They'd deliberately selected an apartment with a huge bathroom, but Barnaby was beginning to think they needed two, because Kotetsu needed perfect silence to shave his beard into shape, and Barnaby missed having the bathroom to himself while he did his hair, and they both liked long showers.

Looking around the apartment one day, Barnaby was struck by how much Kotetsu had reshaped it. When they first looked at it, it had seemed like the ideal compromise to Barnaby; large and open with huge windows, like he preferred, and the lighter colors and homier feel Kotetsu always liked. But now the living room furniture was Kotetsu's, the photos were his choice, almost half of the bookshelves were taken up with Kotetsu's collections, and Kotetsu's records and stereo took up one corner of the living room. They'd agreed on the tables and the bookcases, true, but the photos, the signs of life, those were all Kotetsu.

Was that so bad? So many of the photos were of him, now - Kotetsu was more camera-happy than Barnaby could ever hope to be - or of happy times they'd spent as a family. He couldn't begrudge the older family photos, knowing how much they meant to Kotetsu, and they were a window into times in his life that he rarely spoke of. Maybe the apartment looked different than his old place had when he was single, but his _life_ looked different now, too.

Maybe Kotetsu had noticed, too, because that evening over dinner, he asked, "Want to try shopping for couches again this weekend?"

"You're not afraid of more dentist chairs?"

"It's not like I have a phobia. I just don't want to expect a drill while I'm watching TV."

"And you're not going to panic over leather upholstery?"

"I'm going to write 'Kaede's not four anymore' on my hand before we go out this time," Kotetsu said, then hesitated. "I mean. If you want to."

Barnaby looked through the open dining room door into the living room. "Why not? Maybe we can agree on something this time."

They did, though Barnaby might have been swayed by Kotetsu's enthusiasm for their final choice. It was brown, not black, and had no visible metal, but it had the sleek, modern look Barnaby preferred, and Kotetsu seemed positively jubilant over the fact they'd agreed on it. "Hey," he said, as they were driving home. "Want me to get rid of some of the collection stuff? Or at least do the storage thing like you suggested? I mean, the last time I went through it all was when I was packing it up to move... or, no, okay, I guess I was going through it when you wanted me to get rid of some of it."

"I was thinking I might look through some of those," Barnaby admitted. "If you don't mind."

"Of course I don't mind! Why would I mind?"

* * *

After the couch and loveseat and new armchair were delivered, Barnaby insisted on about five different arrangements of the living room. It wasn't _hard_ work, but Kotetsu would have liked to power up, and Bunny wouldn't let him, and they did have to _lift_ things rather than sliding them so they wouldn't scratch the hardwood floors, so he was only too happy to flop down on the couch when it was done.

All of the furniture was different, now. It was all stuff they'd picked out together, or had agreed at the start to keep. The single-guy sectional was gone - he'd gotten all new furniture after Tomoe died, he couldn't stand the reminders with all of their old stuff - and there were enough dark colors in the living room to hopefully make Bunny happy, without the whole thing looking like a tomb. That was about as much as he knew or cared about decorating. He had some of his stuff, the stereo and records and his collection, and all the photos, though a bunch of them were _theirs_ and not _his._

Kotetsu bounced on the couch happily, now that he'd caught his breath. "Still smells nice and leathery," he said. Bunny had a bit of a distant look on his face. "You want to start moving things again?"

"What?" Barnaby shook his head, then smiled a little. "No, it's fine." He came over to sit next to Kotetsu on the couch, and Kotetsu slung an arm around him.

"So you're happy with it now?" he asked.

Barnaby rested his head on Kotetsu's shoulder. "Yes."


End file.
